What Anacleto Sees
by Late March
Summary: The Religion" by Tim Willocks. Anacleto tries to escape his pain and yearning for Filomena by taking a walk by the sea. He is extremely surprised however, when he sees her in his future...


Anacleto's Story

_Okay guys, this is totally different than anything else I have on here. It's a one shot that I wrote after reading the fantastic book, __The Religion__. Its about the siege of Malta in 1565 (I think that's the proper year.) _

_Anyway, on all the characters in the story I knew exactly how I felt about them. All except this guy – Anacleto. I have this love hate thing going on with him. Anacleto was tortured for committing incest with his sister, who was hanged for the crime. While I feel that that is totally disgusting, I also got the sense that they truly loved each other as man and woman. And I think that in hanging his sister Filomena, the clergy created the "soulless young Spaniard" that's in the story. So I like him for that. But then he kills…ah, I can't tell you the name, and I hate him. But then he dies with Filomena's name on his lips and I feel sorry for him again. _

_As you can see, it's a complicated thing. I hope that you like this story because I feel that it fleshes Anacleto out a little bit more and shows that he is not "soulless". This story is dedicated to the __**Kiyomi**__ half of __**Banana Rum**__, my wonderful Beta-Reader._

_**WARNING: this story does contains themes of incest. Though its only mentioned, it is in there. Don't like it, don't read.**_

**What Anacleto Sees**

Anacleto fingered the uninjured side of his face, carefully avoiding the bruises that had residually spread over the left half of his visage like moss. The young Spaniard hesitantly moved his long, thin fingers over to the more ravaged parts.

The hole where his right eye had been was dark and gaping, the edges of the abyss falling over into the space where his right cheek bone had been. A poultice had been placed by a surgeon where the sheep's gut stitches seeped with pus. He wiped the repugnant secretion away disgustedly on his breeches when he got it on his hand.

His liege, the part-priest, part-Inquisitor, part-warrior, Ludovico Ludovici, slept across the chamber from where he lay propped up against the rough hewn wall. The larger, more homely man's dreams were undisturbed by his servant's anguish. Anacleto balled his hands into fists and yearned to plunge them into the face of Bors, the German Captain's sidekick.

It had been Bors' shot that had buried a leaden ball in his face. It had been Bors that had destroyed his features. It had been Bors that had ruined any chance of Filomena ever loving him again, in any far flung future they might have together in death.

Although his young lover, his sister, Filomena, had been hung by the church for their crime of incest, Ludovico had assured him that their sins had been belatedly forgiven by that same pious population. This had left Anacleto with the struggling, still fledgling hope that they would one day be reunited in Heaven. But now, even the gloriousness of Heaven's streets and palaces would not be able to mask the beastliness of his ruined features.

Filomena would never love him again.

The thought of this was devastating, a boulder that crushed the flesh of his heart, a tragedy so great that not even the dead of the war that waged around him could compare their sorrow to his. In his heart Anacleto knew that he loved his sister just as a man loved a woman – that they hadn't been meant to be brother and sister. That some cosmic mix-up had put them in the same family.

Even after so long, that love still raged strong within him. The love he had stabbed his father and strangled his mother to protect. The love he'd fought to survive for. Now though, Bors the English bastard had ruined everything. For all her good qualities, Filomena had always been a bit vain, and that had been one of the traits that had led her to fall under his spell.

He had been a pleasing man to look at – dark, dark hair and eyes, smooth skin, a strong, thin body made to withstand the world. Anacleto's mind kept returning to the consequences of Bors' attempt to kill him…without the draw of male beauty he feared that Filomena would turn her cheek from him at Heaven's gates and he'd fall forever into the pits of darkest hell.

The utter black of the chamber he lay in only served to provide fodder for his imagination, the details of his hell springing out of the invisible walls like the Maltese from the rubble of their city. He pushed himself onto his knees and bowed his head briefly, sending a plea to god to open Filomena's mind to the new geography of his face.

Standing, Anacleto strode to where he knew the door was and pushed it open silently, ignoring the Italian knights that stared at him from over their late night card games. Their scrutiny of his face only served to fuel the fire at his heels and he quickened his pace. Outside of the auberge he began to pick his way out of Malta, stepping over the rubble of lives and the destruction of man. Beggars – the term that had once only indicated a few but now encompassed the whole of the island – huddled in their filth stained rags. They didn't dare approach him.

He passed the hospital, which was overflowing from the latest clash of religions, and noted that the German captain's cook, Nicodemus, was standing outside talking to the surgeon that had stitched his face. The surgeon, a haggard, older man, glanced at him and Anacleto could see the remains of a soul and the memory of his own visit to the hospital in his eyes.

Passing without comment, Anacleto reached the gates that would let him out onto the sunburned plains and the road to Mdina. At first reluctant, the guard soon obeyed when he learned that Anacleto was Ludovico's elite fighter.

It was a relief to emerge onto the empty grassland and to hear the gates of the ruins of civilization close behind him. The quiet chirping of insects and the feel of the dead grass against his pants helped to calm the furor of his emotions. The sky above was littered with a world of stars, as if the universe was trying to tell the Maltese that they hadn't been forgotten by any higher powers. The smooth stretch of the night sucked from him his burning anger and drowning sorrow – drained him of everything but the desperate need to see his Filomena again.

Realizing that such a thing happening was entirely impossible, Anacleto turned in the direction of the sea and wandered in an uneven line till he reached the coast of Malta. Here it was no longer quiet. Foam and bits of sand flew as waves fell upon the rocky beach; its call to the Earth was deafening. Above him in the high wind ran the straining melody of Carla and Amparo at their instruments across the island. Carla was Ludovico's obsession, and it surprised him that his master wasn't listening to them with the rest of the crowd.

The intensity with which they played aided the sound in overriding all other noises and reaching his ears. As if trying to grasp the beauty of it for himself, Anacleto stretched out an arm, fingers uncurling slowly. If only he could absorb the music into himself…if only he could bring it into himself it would help him woo Filomena when he finally left his earthly coil. In reality, there was only the sting of the icy sea water on his palm.

It was unclear to him how long he stayed to listen to the women play on a far away cliff, as time passed in a hazy dream for him. When he blinked the tears from his eyes the instruments were silent and the sea ruled. Anacleto turned away from the ever-changing world before him and studied the beach and yellow grass beyond that.

As he looked something began to glimmer in the sand, something tiny that grew in size and in brilliance. Anacleto stepped forward and picked it up, smoothing away the algae and sand. An abalone shell the size of his hand sat in his palm. It was worm smooth from decades in the water and the colors of it were clearly visible in the starlight.

They were strangely visible, in fact. He squinted at it with his left eye, and when an image rose up on the shell he shook his head to shake it from his head. Yet it stayed where it was, not a figment of his imagination.

The picture on the shell showed a woman of maybe twenty years. Her back was to him but he could tell that she was dressed very strangely in tight blue pants and a tight chemise that had only short sleeves. On her feet were strangely laced shoes and her hair was pulled back into a tail that cascaded from the base of her neck.

A black box with a glowing screen and fuzzy, bright pictures sat farther behind her, and was the seeming cause of her frustration. The woman waved her arms at the thing, and Anacleto imagined her screaming at it. Suddenly her head cocked as if someone called her and she turned to face him.

Anacleto's mind went fuzzy when he saw Filomena's face. He saw her very face with her lips and her chin and her eyes. Her hair and her ears and…he flushed at his body's reaction to her tight clothing.

Filomena spoke to her unseen companion, waving a hand vaguely in a demonstration of her emotional personality and pulled out a slim device from her pocket. She flipped it open and went to incite some mechanical operation from it when another person entered his line of vision. A man entered and proceeded to calm her hands and pull her close to soothe her rash temper. He placated her in much the same way Anacleto himself once had.

Anacleto desperately wished to hear her voice as the pink lips moved again.

"_Well, when do you think the cable guy will be here_?" the wind whispered to him belatedly in Bors' English language. It served as a fine replacement for Carla and Amaparo's music.

He couldn't bear to close his eye even in the ecstasy of hearing her voice again for fear that the vision would fade away into the ocean spray. His free hand traced her outline and he automatically replaced the strange man with himself. As if in response the man turned his face into view and spoke._ "They said anytime from three to six."_

Anacleto moaned and dropped the shell, only to fall to his knees and pick it up again, clutching it to his breast. The wind stirred his hair and he felt bits of foam hit the back of his neck.

There on the shell, looking back at him, was his very own face. His damaged, destroyed face. A face that Filomena was running her hands over, smiling at. A reincarnation…

Anacleto had never believed in such things, but he'd heard of people who did. If it was true, and he desperately wished it was true, that he was to become another person, another 'him' in a future time with Filomena at his side, then suddenly the idea of reincarnation held a great deal of appeal to him.

Clutching both hands to the shell and to his chest, Anacleto began to cry with bottled up angst, love, hate, anger, impatience, and hope. His knees dug into the sand as he fed those emotions to the land in an uncharacteristic howl.

Each second would seem like a century for the rest of his time.

_AUTHOR'S NOTE – so I hope that you liked this little labor of love. Even though I probably won't get a lot of readers on this, I still love this story and I will remember Anacleto till the day I die. _

_By the way – READ THE BOOK!! Its fantastic. As a reminder, its called "__The Religion"__ and its by Tim Willocks._


End file.
